The Costs of Waiting

When thinking about investing money in infrastructure (whether physical, political, educational, etc) like healthcare it's important to frame the context in which this debate is being held. Let's be honest: our current system will change, probably quite often until some sort of equilibrium is reached, and then it will just change again. The idea of changing something we have now should never, ever be controversial.

Unfortunately, a counterproductive practice people tend to exhibit, that has been more recently explored in the field of behavioral economics, is peoples' misperception that waiting costs nothing.

I find the phrase 'status quo' interesting, because, in reality, it doesn't exist. Nothing is ever not changing in some way. The changes may be small or may seem unrelated, but they are not. And in terms of healthcare, the costs are enormous as emergency rooms become more overcrowded and more American families are faced with the horror of not having the ability to ensure the safety and health of their loved ones.

I am not even advocating a particular solution, and in fact, none of the solutions we have are perfect, and they never will be, but as science moves forward exploring and learning, so must we in public policy. And part of that is realizing that waiting has costs just as much as bad policy does, maybe even more. Not everyone will get exactly what they want out of this debate, but let's think about how we can best move this policy forward and help cover more of those 47 million uninsured Americans.